This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

THE LEGACY OF SUSAN DORSEY: The last time L.A. schools had a female superintendent was 1929

Jan 13, 2016 :: To find the last woman who ran Los Angeles schools before newly appointed Supt. Michelle King takes
over, you would need to dig far back into the 20th century. The last
female superintendent was Susan M. Dorsey, and she held the post from
1920 until the beginning of 1929.
Dorsey worked in the district for more than 30 years — so, like King, Dorsey was an insider.

Born in New York, Dorsey grew up on the East Coast and attended
Vassar College before becoming a classics instructor, according to
archived L.A. Times stories. Marriage brought her to Los Angeles. She
taught Latin at Los Angeles High School beginning in 1896, became a vice
principal and principal, rose to assistant superintendent and
ultimately superintendent.

When she was appointed to the
superintendent's job in 1920, she was the only woman to be
superintendent in a U.S. metropolitan school district, according to The
Times.

Unlike
King, Dorsey’s appointment wasn’t unanimous — the board approved her
hiring by a 5-2 vote, and chose her in part for her local ties,
according to Times coverage of the decision. Her appointment “came as a
complete surprise to everyone, including Mrs. Dorsey,” according to The
Times, because “it was generally reported that she had declined the
position.” A story about her appointment reported:

“She has been
instrumental in instituting a number of reforms in the school system.
She is regarded as progressive and is well acquainted with the local
school needs.”

She earned $8,000 a year at first, the equivalent of $94,934.40 in 2015 dollars,
and by the end of her tenure the salary had increased to $12,000.
King’s superintendent salary hasn’t been finalized yet, but her current
district salary is $303,505.

Dorsey’s district was very different from the one over which King will preside. At that time, Los Angeles had two districts: Dorsey’s was for elementary and junior high school students, and there was another for high schools.

Here’s a description from an L.A. Times story from December 1928 about her resignation:
“When
Mrs. Dorsey assumed the duties of superintendent of the Los Angeles
City School District in 1920 there were 141,744 students enrolled in 233
schools, to which 3,537 teachers were assigned, as against the
seventy-five teachers employed when she began her teaching career in
1896.”

Now, all of the Los Angeles Unified School District has just under 650,000 K-12 students and about 26,000 teachers.

Dorsey
oversaw much of the district’s physical growth at the time,
implementing a building program that cost upwards of $700,000.

The
Times story on her retirement notes: “The startling growth of the city
and the amazingly rapid development of easy communication and quick
transportation greatly complicated the duty of educators.”

One of
the greatest challenges Dorsey faced was the city’s expansion. (King,
by contrast, is facing a declining student population.) It is in part
thanks to Dorsey that L.A. schools are as big as they are, as a Times
story from November 1927, discussing her reappointment, read:

“Throughout
the tremendous building program of the past seven years Mrs. Dorsey has
always urged upon the Board of Education the importance of spacious
grounds. It is through her foresight and vision that school sites range
from five to thirty acres, as she always has insisted that Los Angeles
must look to future expansion and that the children of its citizens must
build strong bodies on its school playgrounds."

She also expanded
adult education, and was at the forefront of bringing vocational
education and technology into schools. Instead of iPads, though, her
tech advancement was to introduce “radio instruction and construction”
and “automobile mechanics and shopwork.” She even implemented some
aviation classes.

The front page of the Los Angeles Times reporting Susan Dorsey's resignation.

She
retired the day before her 72nd birthday, and this is how The Times, in
a front page story on Dec. 7, 1928, described the board meeting at
which her resignation letter was read:

“The white hands of the
superintendent moved nervously and a deep flush overspread her face.
Then the tears came and the head with its crown of snowy hair dropped.
Mrs. Dorsey was witnessing the passing from her hands of a work to which
she had given her best efforts, for thirty-two years.”